The city of San Diego has a lot to offer, from amazing food, great weather, baseball, fun atmosphere, and much more. One thing San Diego has been doing for a while is San Diego New Years Tango Festival. This post is NOT about that event, but about the new event that just started up that year to give some additional variety to this wonderful city. We’re talking about the San Diego Tango Marathon!
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Festival is off to a GREAT start!
New Years has always been a time for me at home, so I’ve never gotten a chance to visit the New Years Festival, so I’m super glad that Brick decided to get this Marathon going. Brick Robbins is a familiar name to many who attend festivals in the US, or at least the West Coast to my knowledge as he’s a DJ. Arranging a marathon is also a wonderful decision, allowing just a great weekend of dancing, with no other distraction/events for people to just enjoy. As it’s been described, a Marathon is filled with dancing and good food, while a festival has teachers, classes, performances, and some social dancing. With this marathon, the amount of dancing and constant good food included was executed amazingly.
Of course it’s not just the food that was good, but this being the first year of this marathon, it drew a more advanced crowd, and without classes, wasn’t really a beginner weekend of dancing. So the level of dancers was great, smiles, people having fun, it was really a much more social event than you will find, and there were so many people that were connected it made the space feel very welcoming. A great group of people, high skill levels, good fun, and dancing for a majority of the day, a good weekend was ahead.
For a first year, the San Diego Tango marathon that Brick took on to organize is a great first run. Not everything is perfect, there’s always something to gripe about, and the only thing that was off for me, was I think one DJ. I can’t remember who, but the energy that was brought from their sets just weren’t working. They did one of the evening Milongas, which didn’t inspire me, or even many people to dance. The next DJ after them, killed it, and kept the late night going and people dancing. The addition of the little live music performance was interesting, added some variety too, which was nice, but did feel out of place. If it was more refined and planned I feel could have been much better received. Maybe if that was done with a break with a big food event, could have been a good point of improvement.
Making it their own. Dancing on the Pier!
A marathon being a place to go dance, and dance, and dance is great, but every place you go has something unqieu for them. Be it the venue, being known for food, the area, extra stuff to do, a theme of some sort. For the San Diego Tango Marathon, the main venue and the food plus the location in itself is a great draw. What they did do to have them stand out, was there was dancing and food catered at a local Pier. Weather was perfect, which of course could be an issue, but being held in the summer had a good chance on things being well. What I remember is a slightly cloudy day, mostly blue skies, and while dancing at the end of a pier with good music and food, was awesome!
The dancing didn’t start too late, so it was warm even with the breeze, but towards the end it did indeed start to get a little chilly as the sun was going down. They brought a mobile dance floor, and everything just worked great. Plenty of space all the way around, this would be one of those instances where I’d say the seating, food, people getting on and off the floor, was really as perfect as can be. We’ve all been to places that there’s a funnel of dancers coming on and off the dance floor. This is one place that everything was perfect!
With a few little issues here and there, everything was pretty great for the first ever San Diego Tango Marathon. For what it was, can only hope it improves. Will one happen this year? Who knows, so much has been getting cancelled, but I haven’t seen any announcements for this event. If you are a vendor and want to get in on this, I don’t really recall much of anything that stood out. The stalls were at the front and around the corner, but to me, was a complete after thought, having them there is a plus, but I don’t think about buying clothes or shoes at a Marathon, a festival with classes, sure, but not a marathon. That very well may just be me.
I look forward to attending more in the future!
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